Half a Century eBook

CHAPTER XXXV.

MY HERMITAGE.

It was midnight before we reached East St. Cloud,
and the ferry-boat had stopped running, so that it
was a bright morning the 7th of June when I found
myself in half a dozen pairs of loving arms. In
a few days we made an excursion to the site of my
cabin. It was more beautiful than I had thought.
On the opposite side of the lake lived Captain Briggs,
with a head full of sea-stories, and a New England
wife. My hermitage would be greatly improved
by such neighbors only one mile distant, and as the
captain had lately killed two large bears between his
house and the site of mine, there would soon be no
more bears. But I must have the loft of my cabin
large enough for several beds, as the children insisted
on spending their summers with me. Brother Harry
bespoke a second room, for he would want a place to
stay all night when out hunting with his friends,
and my hermitage began to grow into a hotel.

I had commenced arrangements with workmen, when Harry
said to me:

“Sis, Elizabeth and I have talked this matter
over, and if you persist, we will take out a writ
of lunacy. There is not a man in this territory
who would not say on oath, that you are insane to think
of going where the bears would eat you if the Indians
did not kill you. The troops are ordered away
from the forts; you’ll get frontier life enough
with us, for we are going to have music with the Indians.”

Next day the troops from Fort Ripley marched past,
on their way to Kansas, to put down the Free State
party. Bleeding Kansas was called on for more
blood, and United States soldiers were to sacrifice
the friends of freedom on the altar of slavery.
The people of Minnesota were left without protection
from savages, that the people of Kansas might be given
over to the tender mercies of men no less barbarous
than the Sioux.

I had run away from the irrepressible conflict, feeling
that my work was done; had fled to the great Northwest—­forever
consecrated to freedom by solemn act and deed of the
nation—­thinking I should see no more of
our national curse, when here it confronted me as
it had never done before.

My cabin perished in a night, like Jonah’s gourd—­perished
that liberty might be crushed in Kansas; for without
a garrison at Fort Ripley, my project was utterly
insane.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE MINNESOTA DICTATOR.

Every day, from my arrival in St. Cloud, evidence
had been accumulating of the truth of that stage-whisper
about Gen. Lowrie, who lived in a semi-barbaric splendor,
in an imposing house on the bank of the Mississippi,
where he kept slaves, bringing them from and returning
them to his Tennessee estate, at his convenience, and
no man saying him nay.